One Word In Life

I was very glad when I found the book in the secondhand bookstore. It was called Six Kinds of Solitude. I've heard of it for quite a while. It was recommended by many book reviews. But after some pages, actually I found myself couldn't even finish a half of it.

Even though I didn't feel getting inspired at all about what the author said, it was its tone that really bothered me. I felt I was preached. Reading the book I felt like I was walking on the street and being approached by a person and he tried to convince me in an unnatural tone that I need to be forgiven and I should believe in God. 

I'm totally fine with religion and their believers. It's just the author's tone that really annoyed me. Why can't those believers and the author just talk like ordinary people in a natural voice when they give a sermon?

I am not crazy about any religion at all, not even Taoism or Buddhism. But I remember since I was a teenager, every time when I saw the slogan on the street lamp said, "Believe in God, then you can go to heaven", I always can't help to compare it with the Buddhist slogan "Put down the sword with blood, then instantly you can become a Buddha." From the two slogans I always felt Buddhism seems to be more generous since you don't need to believe in anyone, but only need to stop doing what is evil to be forgiven. Anyway, I just want to say that I really really don't like to be preached, especially in an unnatural tone.

I  heavily closed the book just to stop its litany and spit a relaxing sigh out. I loosely and cozily lay down in my bed and let my belly button look at the ceiling of my room as if I was trying to float on the sea. I was wondering how talented the author is that he could write a 288 pages book about only one word. What am I going to write about if I can only choose one word? 

I had no intension at all to make a contrast with the author's profound choice - talking about solitude, but all I could think about was really the word F-U-*-K. Not so sure how vulgar or offensive this word is in English, but not many women, at least not many of  my female friends say it in Chinese.

But seriously and honestly, I like the word. Cos it can always immediately and exactly express or release the intensity of my diverse feelings. Not a pinch more and not a pinch less. Very precise and direct at the exact moment. However, just in case people misunderstand that mostly it's only an urge to reveal the degree of my emotion than to offend or insult people, I usually said it when I was only with myself.

Therefore, when a taxi driver pressed his horn to my butt trying to remind me there was a taxi behind my back that I might want to take, I would yell silently, "Stop being so fu*king polite! I know how to do it when I need a cab!" The jingle when I threw myself into a swimming pool in a cold winter evening feeling all my body hair standing up was always me with a shivering voice singing Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in my mind with the only one word lyric, you know which word. This word was also a must line when some shitty food cost me more than it should deserve. Recently, I found myself said it a lot when I had no choice at all or had more than one undesirable choices. Life can really be so hard or confusing sometimes.

think this will not be a very hard subject to write about for me but I can also reckon which word people might want to say after reading my book (if it's ever written and published).......

Five Things That I Don't Understand About That Big Island

1. How beautiful do you want to look, women?

I know some women are willing to suffer to look beautiful. And sometimes I also show my support with my short dress or skirt to those women. But this time in Cardiff some women really got my eyes opened and also think they really pushed the idea to the extreme that I can never ever achieve.

During this trip, besides some London girls I met at the pub admitted they were as confused as I was when watching a rugby game, another comforting thing was I didn't need to wrap myself til being stumbled by my own layers of clothes to against the winter in Europe. Moreover, many locals I had talked to unanimously confessed they felt very cold as well.

The last evening when roaming around the city centre, I saw a lot of young men and women walking along the street wearing a burning summer outfit without ANY coat, jacket or cardigan covered or even just lingering on their arms. However, this didn't surprised me that much since I had been told (and warned) so many times before. The thing really surprised me and I really want to know is how they prevent themselves from shivering? How do those young people cheat their bodies?

2.Are you going to somewhere around Howell School?

That's the question I always asked the bus drivers when I needed to take a bus back to where I stayed in Cardiff. I had no problem and felt like a local taking a bus from where I stayed to the city centre, but going back by bus always exposed my identity as a stupid tourist.

The evening when I came back from Bath, at Cardiff railway station I thought taking the same bus which brought me to the railway station in the morning should be able to take me back. But the bus driver told me it's another bus I needed to take. Even though it confused me, I followed his advice.

It bewildered me a lot about the bus system in Cardiff. In Taipei, generally, buses go and come back by taking the same route. Buses can bring you back to the place where you get on. And there is usually a electrical board to tell you what the name of the stop is. So no need to worry even if you have never been to that place or whether you will miss the stop. But it's totally not the rules in the UK. Why can't you Britons make taking a bus simpler?

But, thankfully, the bus drivers I met were all very friendly and helpful. 

3.How impatient British people are when it comes to tea?

It was absolutely not the first time I saw how to make some tea by using a tea bag or a pyramid tea bag. And I've bought some loose tea from Harrods, Fortnum and Mason, Whittard of Chelsea and Lipton, but none of them can compete with the speed of making a cup of tea like a PG tips tea bag did.

Once I pour some boiling water in my mug with a PG tea bag, then even before I put the kettle down, the water in my mug has already been perfectly dyed and also become strong enough to fresh my brain. (I don't even have the time to yawn and feel how much I miss my bed in the morning!) 

Being a tea addict, no matter it's Chinese tea, Japanese tea, herb tea or black tea I had, at least I needed to put myself in a Zen mode to wait for a few seconds, then I could feel comforted with every following sips. Therefore, at first I was surprised and also kind of worried how tea could be made that fast, but quickly I became a fan of it, since I am not just a tea addict, but also an impatient one!

4.What are the ingredients of Britain's cookery programme? - A comparative study of cookery programmes in the UK and in Taiwan

1 big and posh kitchen
1 pretty woman, with a big butt (optional)
2 hairy bikers
4 total unfamiliar dinner guests
500g of stylish, rural, or cozy atmosphere, plus extra for dusting
3 tbsp tension
pinch of tears

They are the ingredients I roughly conclude for making a Britain's cookery programme after watching Nigella Express, Jamie's Kitchen, Come Dine With Me, The Hairy Bikers, Ready Steady Cook, Rachel Allen:Bake, Cooking It and Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares. And I am wondering if a cookery programme to British people is mainly about entertaining more than providing basic rules or key information of cooking a dish.

The programmes were taken in a shinny, expensive or a professional kitchen or in a beautiful garden. (By the way, I learn the word "pantry" from Nigella Lawson's own kitchen in the show. Jeez...it reminded me how humble my background is. Cos before that I didn't even know there is such a space in a house!) To British people, in a way, cooking seems to become a dreamy living style, not something basic and realistic to our daily lives.

Cookery programmes in Taiwan are usually taken in a studio. And so far, I don't know why but besides a chief, there got to be a host. The kitchen in the show is just a combination of a stove, a sink and a working surface. Nothing really fancy or posh. And in the beginning and the end of the programmes usually they will clearly list on the screen all the ingredients for the dish and give you a review of the method. But, in the UK they don't list it and the chiefs (mostly is also the host) usually speak very fast. They don't seem to expect people to take notes of it.

Don't get me wrong. I like those programmes very much. I enjoyed observing what people wear, what they talk about or what they do during a dinner party on Come Dine With Me. I would also root secretly for the participant and hope after a few weeks' training, he/she could really defeat the other two professional chiefs and cheat the judges. The shows were all amusing, entertaining and educational (from a cultural and English learning aspect), but if I tried to recall what dishes were made and what I've learnt, the images in my head are usually in pieces. Is It because they belong to the Reality Television genre more?

Anyway. I am just curious that after watching those cookery programmes, how many Britons feel stimulated and really cook something, or they just feel entertained and think they need another bag of chips?

5.When will British people become superstitious?

I seldom buy lottery tickets in Taiwan. Because from limited experiences, I found I got little luck on gambling. In Taiwan, you can only buy lottery tickets in a lottery stall and it's usually not very easy to miss a lottery store, especially when the stall has sold a winning ticket of the biggest prize. 

Normally, they will hang a long red banner or put up a big red poster in front of their stall to tell you that. Because many Taiwanese people think it means the place is full of luckiness or the god of fortune has greater chances passing the stall so that they have higher possibility to become a billionaire. Besides, you can always find the god of fortune on the counter of a stall. And I don't know where the ritual comes from, but I've seen people touching the head of the god's head  with their lottery tickets. (No wonder the good of fortune is a bald guy....) 

Compare to the lottery stalls in Taiwan, the places where people buy their lottery tickets in the UK are very 'quiet'. You would not see any banner or poster on the wall. In fact, you will not even notice they sell lottery ticket! I remember the day before going to Manchester, I got my lotter ticket from a grocery store where I didn't even notice a single sign they sell lottery ticket, let alone seeing Britain's god of fortune. 

Ok, maybe we Chinese are too obsessed with money.

Last Cruise

After noticing my zits on my right cheek have got much better, after feeling getting more used to say “cheers” instead of “thank you” to a bus driver and after finally reducing the times of saying “hao”, which means "OK" in Chinese on the phone, it has also come to the end of my journey.

My last evening in the UK, sitting on the cozy red sofa listening to people accusing each other on Jeremy Kyle's show, I felt the urge to get away from the ugly side of humanity and have a last cruise of the city.

Clip-clop. Clip-clop. Listen to the certain, confident but easy clop from my boots when they kissed the chilly ground, I found it interesting that in both ends of my journeys to Germany and to the UK this time, I felt I’ve lived in both of the cities for much much longer than just five and fifteen days. 

Walking down Cathedral Road, I passed the grocery store, the old lady's vegetable shop, the butcher's shop that I had been to and then some beautiful waiting-for-let houses with their winter sleeping gardens. I started to wander between the reality and my fantasy. I picked a house I liked and began to picture what if I really live here, what I would be doing right now in the evening.

"Hmm…will I be crouching on my chair in front of my desk, having shit Chinese food from Tesco alone with a legal textbook on my lap and also trying to swear at the same time while eating it?! I may have no choice since I was as homesick as my best friend Gina used to be and being a student here has already made me too exhausted to cook...... OR…after all these years here, I have been totally assimilated that I will be sinking into a dark blue cheap cotton sofa from Ikea, stroking my gradually bigger and bigger, thicker and thicker belly and thighs with a remote control in my hand and thinking about what is the junk food I am going to have next…" 

Imagining both of the pictures along the road, I tried my best not to grin like a dumbass and continued my walk toward the shopping centre.

When getting closer and closer to the city centre, besides trying to buy myself a pair of shoes in this country, I discovered the second frustrating thing living in the UK – It was just about 7pm, but most shops were ready to close, even coffee shops. And the only available cheap food seemed to be Burger King or Subway this kind of place. The voice-over resounded in my head and said, “No wonder binge drinking is such an issue in this country - Cos they don't have many choices of entertainment in the evening! Poor British people…”

It was Hobson's choice that I walked into the Burger King. The young girl in her uniform standing opposite the counter had a very familiar face and reminded me of someone. It was not because of her black hair, yellow skin and her Chinese name suggested by the name tag on her left chest. It was Wei-Wei’s ponytail and hard-working attitude that reminded me of Sylvia, a friend whom I had visited and stayed with for two weeks in London in 2007.

Sylvia had a BA degree in Music in Taiwan. Her major and minor were Vocal Music and Piano. I still remembered the evening she was in her slivery white dress being radiant and singing on her mini graduation concert. She looked very elegant and her performance was beautiful.

When I saw Sylvia again in 2007, she has just got her MA degree in Arts Administration and Management in a university in London and also just started to work from early evening till early morning as a waitress in a night club. There were many times I wondered if those customers knew the waitress, who just took their orders and brought them their fancy cocktails could actually play wonderful piano and sing like an angel.

I could still recall a few times watching Sylvia dragging her stories with heavy steps going to work. And if I dug out my memory, I could still hear Sylvia's sobs when she told me parts of the stories and the reasons why she was rather being bossed around and working like a dog in the UK than coming back to Taiwan to have some claps she deserved on the stage. 

Sylvia had lost a very close family member due to a serious car accident when she was studying in the UK. And because of many many family and her emotional issues, Taiwan has become a place that’s too sorrowful for her to live in.

Even though the journey in 2007 was full of fascinating memory, after coming back to Taiwan, occasionally even till now I still think about Sylvia's story and wonder to what extent or because of what incident that I'll make such a sudden turn and find a new balance, like Sylvia did, in my life. 

Wei-Wei handed me my tea and stopped me before I went any deeper to my question this time. I smiled at Wei-Wei and tried to squint gently down as if it would make me discover what story she was dragging to work in such a cold evening with her. 

Time is never enough for remembering all those good and sad old days. But tea is always helpful when it comes to digestion, even when it's about memory. I quickly finished my tea after doing some writing and then kept cruising to the rest of the evening. 

Didn't really look down while walking, but I think, like Sylvia, we all drag some stories behind those smiley faces with us, no matter where we are or how hard we try to forget.